A couple claim they are being forced to sell their £1.85m farm home because of a single complaint from a neighbour that their holiday let on it was 'too noisy.'
Richard and Victoria Kerrison said they were shocked after the noise complaint led to a ruling they did not have the correct permission to let parts of the property.
Their neighbour, a screenwriter who has had work bought by Leonardo Di Caprio's production company, had initially complained about loud music and children playing.
Richard and Victoria Kerrison said they were shocked after the noise complaint led to a ruling they did not have the correct permission to let parts of the property.
Their neighbour, a screenwriter who has had work bought by Leonardo Di Caprio's production company, had initially complained about loud music and children playing.
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NewsTranscript
00:00Initial complaints started in 2019. Now interestingly we were running Courtyard Barn as a
00:08holiday property exactly the same as it is running now. 2006 to 2019 with no issues from neighbours
00:17at all. It changed in 2019. The original water bore for the site collapsed. Our neighbours said
00:26it was due to our activities. Now the original water bore was designed when it was a dairy.
00:32Now a herd of cows drink far more water than any guests staying. The neighbours complained to the
00:40council. The council started to come out or the enforcement officer did and things escalated and
00:46heavy-handed lawyers letters from our neighbours solicitors and the council in the end decided that
00:53they were going to close us down really. Our neighbours have not contacted us at all about the
01:01alleged noise that was coming from our Courtyard Barn holiday activities. It was all directed to
01:07the council. Odd thing is we never had any specific times and dates. We didn't see all of
01:16the information until after the cut-off point where we've actually gone to appeal and we were
01:23literally weeks away from the public inquiry. The living area of the barn is approximately 200
01:30feet away from the neighbour's garden wall so we were quite surprised that they could actually hear
01:36specific noise and Richard and I both live on the premises so we're very aware of noise. I feel quite
01:43dumbfounded that a business that we've been operating for 18 and a half years will still
01:49to this day no formal complaints. It just seems outrageous. Basically our business was wiped out
01:57at the appeal through one person's opinion that has caused us now to say this is a big property
02:05we don't particularly want to rent it out as a long-term let so therefore our only option really
02:13is to put it on the market it's not where we wanted to be but we feel that we need to move away
02:2130 years building a business a beautiful business beautiful house in a beautiful location
02:26and now really our only answer is to sell the property and move on. It's like you're living
02:32in the middle of the countryside we just wanted to share that with other people.